Bonhoeffer's involvement in the plot to kill Hitler has been one of the most discussed and contested aspects of his witness. Kevin O'Farrell deftly shows us why so much of that attention is misguided wish-fulfilment. Bonhoeffer was neither a freewheeling existentialist nor a heroic warrior against evil. He was a theologian first and foremost who saw that faithful Christian action is oriented by a fundamentally Christocentric logic through which the vagaries of history and the violence within it are revealed in a totally unexpected light.

Brian Brock, University of Aberdeen, UK

This is a remarkable book – in terms of its analysis and mode of reasoning. It provides an in-depth and hermeneutically sophisticated reading of Bonhoeffer's language of the exception and its cognates that places the concept concretely within Bonhoeffer's theologically-inflicted account of history. What emerges in the process is not the image of the heroic and ingenuous moral agent but of a decentered self that is overwhelmed amidst the fragmentariness and tragedy of life by God's creative and empowering action. A highly original and compelling contribution to Bonhoeffer studies!

Robert Vosloo, Stellenbosch University, South Africa